Someone To Love

by Mary Balogh

  “Another question.” He gazed into her eyes when she opened them. “Do you want to marry me?”

  She gazed back for a moment, then shifted her gaze to the paper in her hand. She spread it carefully on her lap and looked down at it.

  “Yes,” she said, returning her gaze to him at last. “But do you want to marry me?”

  “Go and fetch your bonnet,” he told her, and he took the license from her lap, replaced it in his pocket, and reached out a hand to help her to her feet.

  “Very well,” she said.

  She paused to frown at him a few moments later when he held the drawing room door for her. She opened her mouth to speak, drew breath, and then left the room without saying anything.

  It was his wedding day, he thought.

  But marriage is forever.

  Forever. A lifetime. A long time.

  He waited for panic to assail him. But he waited in vain. After a few moments he wandered downstairs to await the ladies. Perhaps John would have some interesting conversation for him.

  * * *

  Anna sat beside Elizabeth in the barouche, facing the horses, while Avery sat with his back to them. It was a sunny day, and even when the carriage was moving it was warm. None of them was talking. Elizabeth had looked startled and quite incredulous when Anna had knocked on the door of her bedchamber and asked if she was free to accompany her to her wedding. But it had not taken her long to understand, and she had smiled and then laughed instead of swooning from shock and horror as Anna had half expected.

  “But how very predictable of Avery,” she had said. “I do not know why we did not expect it, Anna.”

  “He is mad,” Anna had said. “Judging just by the events of today so far, Lizzie, and it is only half past ten—he is utterly mad. I had better go and get my bonnet.”

  He had handed them both into the barouche a few minutes later, Anna first. Elizabeth had paused when her hand was in his and her foot on the bottom step.

  “How very splendid of you, Avery,” she had said. “Everyone will be incensed.”

  “I do not know why they would be,” he had said, raising his eyebrows and looking somewhat bored. “A marriage is the sole concern of two people, is it not? Anna and me in this case.”

  “Ah,” she had said, “but a wedding is the property of everyone but those two people, Avery. They will be incensed. Take my word on it.” She had laughed.

  Now, though, she was holding Anna’s hand and squeezing it, for the carriage, which was proceeding along a nondescript street—Anna had not even noticed its name as they turned onto it—was slowing as they approached a nondescript church. And it was very clear that this was indeed the street and the church where their nuptials were to be solemnized. A gentleman was waiting outside, and he stepped smartly forward to open the door and set down the steps before the coachman could descend from the box.

  “All is in readiness, Your Grace,” he said.

  Avery was the first to alight. He helped Elizabeth down and then offered his hand to Anna.

  “You make a ravishing bride,” he said, his eyes moving lazily over her as she descended.

  He did not sound ironic, though she was wearing her plain straw bonnet with her sprigged muslin morning dress. But, oh dear, she really was a bride, was she not? She had not grasped the reality of it yet.

  “Meet my trusty secretary, Edwin Goddard, ladies,” he said when she was down on the pavement. “Lady Overfield, Edwin, and Lady Anastasia Westcott.”

  The gentleman bowed to them both.

  “Edwin has come to witness the nuptials with Cousin Elizabeth,” Avery explained. “If I had left him at home, he would no doubt have been wasting his time drawing up a guest list for my stepmother, the duchess. She likes to borrow him when I am not at home to protest. Shall we step inside?”

  Anna took his offered arm and entered the church with him. It was larger than it seemed from the outside, high ceilinged and long naved. It was dark, the only light coming from a few candles and tall windows with pebbled glass that had probably not been cleaned for at least a century. It was cold, as churches always were, and had the distinctive smell of candle grease and old incense and prayer books and slight damp. A youngish man was striding toward them clad in clerical robes. He had fair hair and eyebrows that were so light they were virtually invisible until he drew close. He was smiling. His face was dusted with freckles.

  “Ah, Mr. Archer,” he said, holding out his right hand to shake Avery’s. “And . . . Miss Westcott?” He shook Anna’s hand. “You have the license, sir? I am all ready to officiate for this happy occasion.”

  “And Mrs. Overfield and Mr. Goddard as witnesses,” Avery said, reaching into his pocket for the license.

  The clergyman smiled and nodded at them before examining the document briefly. “It seems to be in order,” he said cheerfully. “Shall we begin? The nuptial service is very brief when stripped of all the trappings that many people like to add. But it is just as sacred and just as binding. And just as joyous for the bride and groom. Flowers and music and guests are not essential.”

  He led the way down the nave. Anna could hear the men’s bootheels ringing on the stones as they walked. Foolishly she found herself trying to work out how many days ago she had received that letter from Mr. Brumford, how many days since she had first set eyes upon the Duke of Netherby, standing indolent and gorgeous and terrifying in the hall of Archer House. Was it only days? Or weeks? Or months? She no longer knew. She thought of Miss Ford and Joel, of the children in her schoolroom, of Harry and Camille and Abigail and their mother, of her grandmother and aunts, of Alexander and Jessica, of the grandparents who had turned her out after her mother died. One’s life was said to pass before one’s eyes when one was dying, was it not? No one had ever said that the same thing happened when one was about to get married.

  The walk along the nave seemed both endless and all too short.

  She saw Avery as he was now, dressed with conservative elegance. And she thought of him as he had been a few hours ago, wearing only tight breeches and demonstrating a seemingly inhuman swiftness of reflex and an unearthly defiance of gravity. She felt the panicked fear that she did not know anything about him except that he was dangerous. And that his real self, whatever that might be, was hidden deep within layer upon layer of artifice and she might never uncover it.

  But they had come to a halt at the altar rail, and it was too late to panic. They stood and faced the clergyman, while Elizabeth took a seat in the front pew and Mr. Goddard stood beside Avery.

  “Dearly beloved,” the clergyman said to the four people gathered before him, and he was using the familiar voice of clergymen everywhere. If there had been five hundred people in the pews, every one of them would have heard him clearly.

  Neither of the witnesses spoke up when invited to do so if they knew of any impediment to the marriage. No one dashed into the church at the last moment to yell stop! Anna promised to love, honor, and obey the man in whose hand her own was clasped. He made similar vows to her. “With my body I thee worship” was one thing he told her, his blue eyes very intent upon hers from beneath half-lowered eyelids. Mr. Goddard handed him a gold ring, and he slid it onto her finger, watching her face, not her hand, as he did so. It fit perfectly. How had he done that?

  And then, before she had quite composed her mind to the realization that she was getting married, she was married. According to the clergyman, she was Mrs. Avery Archer.

  So many names. Anna Snow. Anastasia Westcott. Lady Anastasia Westcott. Mrs. Archer. The Duchess of Netherby. Was she? She found herself alarmingly close to laughing as she had a sudden picture of the children at the orphanage when Miss Ford read to them the letter that would announce the marriage. Their Miss Snow was now Lady Anastasia Archer, Duchess of Netherby. She imagined widened eyes, gasps of awe, sighs of satisfaction. What frivolous and silly thoughts to be ha
ving at such a moment.

  They were being taken into the small vestry, where the register was awaiting them, opened to the correct page, an inkpot beside it, a freshly mended quill pen laid across a blotter. Anna signed her maiden name for the last time—she stopped herself only just in time from writing Anna Snow. Avery signed his name with bold, swift strokes—Avery Archer. Their signatures were duly witnessed. And that was that, it seemed.

  They were man and wife.

  The clergyman shook hands with each of them outside the vestry, wished bride and groom a long and fruitful life together, and disappeared back inside. Anna still did not know his name. Elizabeth was hugging her tightly, tears swimming in her eyes, a smile on her lips, while Mr. Goddard was shaking hands with his employer. Then Elizabeth was hugging Avery, and Mr. Goddard was bowing to Anna until she held out her right hand and he took it.

  “I wish you all the happiness in the world, Your—” He glanced at the door of the vestry, which was slightly ajar. “Mrs. Archer.”

  “The poor man,” Avery said when they were all halfway back up the nave, “would perhaps have had an apoplexy if he had been told of all the handles that attach themselves to my name, and now to yours too, Anna. But the marriage is quite legal even when I have been stripped to the bare bones of my identity. You are my wife, my dear, and my duchess.”

  The sun seemed blinding when they stepped outside, and the air full of summer warmth. A woman was hurrying by on the other side of the street, a child holding her hand and jumping cracks in the pavement. A horse was clopping along the road away from them. Farther back a young boy was sweeping a steaming pile of manure out of the street. From the high window of a house behind him, a maid shook the dust from a rug and called down to the boy. All the ordinary activities of daily life were proceeding around them just as though the world had not changed in the last fifteen minutes or so. Sunlight gleamed on Anna’s ring, and she realized she had not even worn gloves. How appalling.

  “There is a bookshop close to here that I have been meaning forever to have a look at,” Elizabeth said. “Mr. Goddard, do you like bookshops? Would you care to accompany me there? We can return home in a hackney cab. I am sure you must be an expert at summoning them.”

  “It would be my pleasure, my lady,” Mr. Goddard said. “With His Grace’s permission, that is.”

  “Edwin,” Avery said with a sigh, “you may go to the devil for all I care. No, perhaps I ought not to be that rash. The devil may not be willing to give you back when I have need of you, having discovered for himself how invaluable you are. And I will have need of you, I daresay. Not today, however.”

  Elizabeth smiled sunnily at them both and availed herself of Mr. Goddard’s arm. They walked away along the street at a brisk pace without looking back.

  “You do not need a chaperone any longer, you see, Anna,” Avery said as she watched them go. “Not when you are accompanied by your husband.”

  She turned her head to look at him, and it was as though the reality of it all finally hit her full force. She gazed at the Duke of Netherby and felt all the strangeness of him and all the reality of the fact that he was her husband.

  It was as though he had read her thoughts. “Until death do us part,” he said softly, and offered his hand.

  He seated himself beside her in the barouche this time and took her hand in his again. He was not wearing gloves either.

  “Much as I would like to take you back to Archer House and close all the doors and windows to the outside world until tomorrow morning,” he said as the barouche moved forward, “it cannot be done, alas.”

  “Oh.” A sudden thought struck her. “The whole family is coming again this afternoon to discuss our wedding in greater detail.”

  “The whole family,” he said, “has been assembling at Westcott House for the purpose of arranging your life for altogether too long, Anna. It is in danger of becoming an ingrained habit. It is time they resumed their own separate lives. But my guess is that Cousin Elizabeth will lose herself in the depths of that bookshop until she is sure it is far too late for her to be the one to break the news. Edwin will be happy. He and books are the best of friends.” He raised his voice to address the coachman. “Westcott House, Hawkins.”

  “They are all going to be terribly shocked,” Anna said.

  “I just hope,” he said, “that John will not break the news to them as he escorts them up to the drawing room. He seems of the opinion that he must make conversation with your guests. Do you think you might impress upon him the importance of behaving like a regular footman for this occasion only, Anna? He appears to be quite unimpressed by my awful consequence.”

  “He is so very thrilled,” she said, “to be a footman at a grand house in London and actually to be wearing livery. I will have a word with him. We certainly do not want him telling my grandmother and my aunts that we went out and got married this morning.”

  She laughed, and he turned his head to regard her with lazy, smiling eyes.

  “I will hope, my duchess,” he said softly, “to hear more of that in the days to come.” He raised her hand to his lips and held it there, his eyes holding hers.

  Anna bit her lip.

  “As soon as we are able to convince everyone that there is nothing else to plan for a while,” he said, “we will hint them on their way. I doubt Elizabeth will need any persuasion to return home with her mother and Riverdale. With the possible exception of Jessica, she is by far my favorite of your relatives, Anna, and she will know that three is definitely a crowd on a wedding night. And that is what tonight will be—our wedding night at Westcott House. Tomorrow we will leave for Wensbury.”

  He settled their hands on the seat between them and laced their fingers.

  . . . our wedding night.

  Nineteen

  Avery stood at the drawing room window. Behind him his stepmother complained and Jessica sulked. Anna was sitting quietly not far from the door, her hands clasped in her lap, the right over the left, he had noticed. She had changed into a light blue afternoon dress, which could not be more severe if it tried—up to the neck, down to the wrists and the ankles, not a bow or frill in sight. Bertha had redone her hair and had combed it back so ruthlessly from her face that her eyes almost slanted. Anna had mentioned over luncheon—of which she had consumed virtually none—that she wished she could just run and hide. He had been tempted to grant her wish, but there was, alas, family to be dealt with first.

  His stepmother complained to Anna because she had not been at home this morning when Madame Lavalle arrived to discuss bride clothes. She complained to Avery because he had been gone from home all morning when there was so much to discuss with regard to the wedding that she scarcely knew where to start. Had he made arrangements to have the banns read on Sunday? But where? She wished to discuss the desirability of choosing St. Paul’s Cathedral. She complained that Edwin Goddard had disappeared from his office this morning before she could discuss the guest list with him and had not reappeared before she came here. It was very unlike him, and to do it today of all days was the outside of enough. She complained to Anna that if she would insist upon looking so much like a governess, she must not be surprised if Avery changed his mind.

  She was clearly in a waspish mood—perhaps because of Jessica.

  His half sister had not been pleased by the announcement he had made to her yesterday afternoon. She had been disbelieving, horrified, furious in quick succession. She had been about to throw one of the raging tantrums for which she had been famous until the advent of her current governess. But when he had raised his quizzing glass to his eye and regarded her in silent distaste, she had dissolved into tears instead and asked him between gasps and sobs how he could be so disloyal to Abby and Harry and Camille that he would actually betroth himself to that drab, ugly woman.

  “Have a care, Jess,” he had said very softly, lowering his glass but not offer
ing his arms for her comfort.

  “I am being unfair, am I not?” she had said, her sobs abandoned, her expression rueful, her face blotched red, her eyes bloodshot. “It is Uncle Humphrey I should hate. But what would be the point? He is dead.”

  “I shall expect you to treat my duchess with the proper courtesy, Jess,” he had told her, “if you do not want to be confined to the schoolroom until the age of eighty or until I marry you off to the first man who can be persuaded to take you off my hands.”

  Her lips had quirked and she had given in to a hiccuping giggle.

  “I shall,” she had promised. “But I do wish you had chosen someone else, Avery—anyone else. You will be bored with her within a fortnight. But I suppose that will not matter to you, will it? Gentlemen are able to have other interests while ladies have only their embroidery and their tatting.”

  “Sometimes, Jess,” he had said, raising his quizzing glass halfway to his eye again, “I wonder about what your governess has been teaching you.”

  He had sent word with his coachman earlier that Lady Jessica Archer was to accompany her mother to Westcott House this afternoon. And here she was, silent and sulking and punctiliously courteous.

  Molenor and his wife were arriving, Avery could see, and right behind them came the old fossil of a carriage in which the Dowager Countess of Riverdale and her eldest daughter moved about town when they needed to. The four of them were shown into the drawing room together, and there was a flurry of greetings before the complaints resumed. Their eldest boy had just been rusticated from school for the rest of the term, Cousin Mildred reported, having been caught climbing through the window of his dormitory at four o’clock in the morning—climbing in, not out—his hair and clothes smelling quite unmistakably of a floral perfume. The news had come in a letter from the headmaster this morning, and Molenor had not even been to his club. He was, in fact, planning to set out for their home in the north of England early tomorrow morning.